Sometime ago I posted about the artists that replaced Joe Simon and Jack Kirby during the period that both were performing military service. (Replacing Simon and Kirby, Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3). My previous postings concerned the Newsboy Legion but here I am going to discuss Sandman. Unfortunately the reader will be at a greater disadvantage compared to previous chapters. While DC’s Newsboy Legion archives included work done by other artists, the Simon and Kirby Sandman Archive was limited to just Joe and Jack (at least that was DC’s intention).

To refresh the reader’s memory, while working for DC Joe and Jack realized that they would soon have to leave to perform their military duty. So they worked hard at creating an inventory that could be used while they were gone. Simon and Kirby were able to provide quite a bit of inventory but eventually it ran out.

The Sandman covers and adventures that appeared before issue #91 were done by Simon and Kirby. While the splash for “Courage a la Carte” was not Joe and Jack’s finest job, I am confident that Kirby did the pencils. The most obvious give-a-way is the thug at on the right of the splash. I have no idea who the inker was but obviously it was neither Joe nor Jack. Like I said this was not their finest effort but their inventoried work often was not quite as nice as their less rushed efforts.

But what followed the splash to “Courage a la Carte” looks pretty crude, much cruder than would be expected even for the inventory work. For good reason because it was not penciled by either Jack or Joe. Kane would have been very young at the time and even he admitted that his efforts at the time were rather poor. The attribution of this art to Gil Kane is not based on the art itself, instead I base this attribution on a statement that Gil made

I got a “Newsboy Legion” job to do by myself (like I had done the rest of them except they didn’t fix it up or do the splash),

So far “Courage a la Carte” and “The Lady of Linden Lane” (Star Spangled #30, March 1944) are the only stories for DC that I have seen with a Kirby splash for a story otherwise done by another artist (although I have not studied the Boy Commandos stories yet). Since the circumstances matches Gil’s remarks, I have tentatively credit him for these pieces. The two Kane stories were published at about the same time (while I use March as the cover date for Adventure #91, that title was actually a bimonthly) but were likely to have been done earlier and inventoried like the rest of Simon and Kirby’s work.

Unlike most of the Sandman art that I cover in this chapter, “Courage a la Carte” was one of the stories included in DC’s Simon and Kirby Sandman Archives. It is also listed in the Jack Kirby Checklist. But as I said above, Kirby only drew the splash.

After Kane, work on Sandman was done by another artist, the same one who followed Gil on the Newsboy Legion. Earlier I had misidentified this artist as Kane but the timeline simply will not support that. Kane entered military service in April or May 1944 but work by this artist appeared until October 1945. Joe Simon suggested that this might be the Cazeneuve brothers, but I have seen enough of their work to discount them. Other suggestions have been made but I have not found them convincing either.

The work by this artist is nothing like that for Simon and Kirby but it would be a mistake to discount him. I find his art to be interesting and original. The quality varies from story to story but I have now come to believe that much of that was due to the various inkers used on his pencils.

The same replacement artists discussed above worked on a number of Sandman stories. The stories were still credited to Simon and Kirby but were any of their fans really fooled? I really enjoy much of his story art but find most of his splashes not all that interesting. I include above one of the better examples of his splashes.

The main replacement for Simon and Kirby had an uninterrupted run for the Newsboy Legion (Star Spangled #31 to #49, April 1944 to October 1945). But he only did three issues of the bimonthly Sandman (Adventure #92 to #94, June to October 1944) before another artist was used. Like most of the replacement artists, I really have no idea who did “The Riddle of the Rembrandt” but his talent is pretty obvious.

The main replacement Simon and Kirby replacement returned after a single issue absence. “No Curtains for Cupid” looks rather different from the other examples I provided above. I still feel they were done by the same penciler but in my opinion much of the apparent differences can be assigned to the wide range of inkers used. Regardless of the inker, the art retains a unique style.

Adventure #98 (June 1945), pencils by unidentified artist

The cover to Adventure #98 was previously discussed on this blog (Not Kirby, Adventure #98). In that post I recounted a number of reasons why I felt the cover was not done by Jack Kirby but the most important of them was the manner that the caveman’s right forearm was drawn. Kirby’s anatomy was not accurate but he always made kept a solid underlying form. The form of the caveman’s forearm is broken in a manner that Jack never did. To all the reasons I previously presented I can now add another. a mirror image of the caveman figure (in more modern clothing) is also found twice on the cover of Star Spangled #45 (June 1945, Replacing Simon and Kirby, Chapter 2). This is much too much use of the same image to credit to Jack. Swiping is a much more obvious explanation.

The main replacement artist would also provide the work for Adventure #99. This means with the exception of a single issue (Adventure #95) the main replacement artist would draw Adventure #92 to #99; June 1944 to August 1945. This matches pretty well with his uninterrupted run for the Newsboy Legion.

Jack Kirby returns to Adventure Comics with issue #100. However Kirby only provided the cover while the interior Sandman story was done by a rather inferior penciler. The primitive art for “Sweets for Swag” remind me of the work that I am now attributing to Gil Kane. In fact the main replacement artist run for the Newsboy Legion was also followed by what looks like the same artist in Star Spangled #52 (January 1946, Chapter 2). In Chapter 2 I had questionably credited it to Gil Kane but I am having second thoughts. Gil would have been entering the armed forces at the time this art was created so it seem unlikely he would have drawn it. This story is another one that was mistakenly attributed to Kirby in the DC Simon and Kirby Sandman Archives and the Jack Kirby Checklist.

Once again Kirby provides a cover for Adventure #101 (December 1945) but did not draw the interior story. The artist who did do “No Nap for No-Nerves” did a good job although I got to say that in his splash Sandy and the Sandman appear to be blowing the thugs away and not scaring them out of their shoes.

With Adventure #102 Kirby is finally back to drawing both the cover and the story art. Sandman was back in safe hands and all was once again good with the world. Or that would have been the case if this was not the last Adventure issue to include the Sandman and Sandy. Yes the Sandman was replaced with Superboy and Kirby would not appear in the title again until 1958 when, without Simon, he drew Green Arrow. A convenient explanation for the sudden demise of Sandman so shortly after Kirby’s return would by that it was a reprisal to Simon and Kirby going to a competitor, Harvey Comics, to publish their Stuntman and Boy Explorers. While that would make an interesting story the timing just does not work. While Adventure #103 and Stuntman #1 would both come out in April, DC would have to have made the decision to change directions with Adventure before they were likely to have found out about Simon and Kirby’s defection.

While Simon and Kirby were away, the two titles followed a similar timeline.

In the previous chapter I covered the artist who did most of the Newsboy Legion stories while Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were off doing their military service. I had questionably attributed this work to Arturo or Louis Caseneuve based on comments made by Joe Simon. However I have now seen enough work attributed to these artists to doubt that they had anything to do with penciling all those Newsboy Legion stories. I also looked into a commenter’s suggestion that the artist might be Phil Bard and although I will completely rule that out I do not believe it is a correct attribution either. All I can say is that I am certain this artist was not Gil Kane. Whoever the replacement artist was his Newsboy run ended with Star Spangled #49 (October 1945).

It was not Simon and Kirby that followed the replacement artist but yet another artist that I am unable to identify. Unfortunately he is not up to the standards of the S&K replacement artist let alone the real Simon and Kirby. Panel 2 of page 11 (see above) and the cover for KO #1 (October 1945) clearly share some sort of connection. The cover dates for the SS #50 and KO #1 are so close that is hard to believe one was swiped from the other unless that happened before publication. Perhaps there is an older Simon and Kirby work that both were based upon that has not yet been recognized. Oddly while no one seems to have credited “The Leopard Man Changes His Spots” as a work by Simon and Kirby some have attributed the KO #1 cover to Kirby. However there are so many things wrong with the KO #1 cover that a Kirby attribution can certainly be rejected (see Not Kirby: KO #1, KO #1 Returns and KO #1, Round Three).

Star Spangled #52 (January 1946), pencils and inks by Jack Kirby

The covers for Star Spangled #44 (May 1945) to #47 (August 1945) were drawn by the replacement artist that I covered in my last chapter (Chapter 2, The Replacement). Jack Kirby drew the covers for Star Spangled #48 (September 1945) to #51 (December 1945) but the question is when were these done? Were they part of the inventory that Simon and Kirby created before they entered military service? Or were they done after Jack returned from Europe? Kirby could have drawn them even if he had not yet left the service. I am not going to try to answer that question at this time but I am certain that the cover for Star Spangled #52 (January 1946) was not part of the original inventory. Kirby not only penciled this cover he inked it as well. Such inking was a luxury that Kirby could not afford while busily building up the original inventory. So from this point on it can confidently be said that Kirby was back. It has a Simon and Kirby signature but I do not think Joe was out of the military yet. This was just Jack recognizing his partnership with Simon. Joe had done the same thing earlier on the cover for Boy Commandos #12 (Fall 1945) done while Joe was in the Coast Guards and Jack was still in Europe.

To my eyes this cover has a more advanced appearance compared to earlier covers. Much more like what would be seen in Stuntman; the first issue of which would appear a few months later. Even later Star Spangled covers were not quite as advanced probably because Jack did not ink them as well.

Jack Kirby did the cover for Star Spangled #52 but he did not draw the “Rehearsal for Crime” story that appeared inside. Nor was this the artist who did art found in issues #50 and #51. The artist’s work reminds me a lot of the earlier work that Gil Kane did for the story in issue #30 (Chapter 1, The Newsboy Legion).

Page 5 of “Rehearsal for Crime” was not the best page for showing that Gil Kane probably drew this story but I could not resist using it because of the fourth panel. It is a swipe that ultimately is derived from Simon and Kirby art from Star Spangled #8 (May 1942). But that was not the version that was actually swiped, it was the one Kane did for Star Spangled #30 (March 1944). Only now the figures of Gabby and Scrapper have been switched.

Jack Kirby would draw the stories for issues #53 to #59 (February to August 1946) and the covers up to Star Spangled #61 (October 1946) and that would end Simon and Kirby’s involvement in their Newsboy Legion. I doubt that Simon and Kirby every just walked away from work so I believe this was DC’s decision. Stuntman #1 is cover dated April so that timing is just right to suggest that Simon and Kirby were dropped because they had jumped ship to a competitor (Harvey Comics). While this might have been true I would not read too much into it because Joe and Jack continued to provide work for Boy Commandos for years to come. Without question DC was pretty mad about what Joe and Jack had done but just not mad enough to sabotage a popular title like Boy Commandos.

Simon and Kirby’s replacements would still strive to look like they were done by the masters but unfortunately these imitators were just not that successful. It seems that each issue had a different artist with perhaps the penciler for “Steve Brodie the 2nd” being the best.

I provide another example a Newsboy Legion artist from after Simon and Kirby had left a second time. Perhaps the reader can sense that my heart just is not into this work. It is not these artists are really that bad but coming after Simon and Kirby it is a bit of a let down. They did not even have the interesting and original qualities of the main replacement artist from the war years.

Star Spangled #64 (January 1947), art by unidentified artist

The cover for Star Spangled #64 (January 1947) shows a boat leaving the Newsboy Legion behind. Somehow it seems a fitting metaphor for the last issue of the Star Spangled that contained the Newsboy Legion. The next issue would feature Robin on the cover. Still the run lasted from April 1942 to January 1947. At 56 issues that is not bad at all. The demise of the Newsboy Legion seems to be part of DC’s decision to move away from the multitude of golden age features and concentrate on what they considered their core characters, Superman and Batman.

As I mentioned in the last chapter to this serial post, most of the replacement art for Simon and Kirby’s Newsboy Legion seems to have been created by one artist. There does appear to be one basic style for all the story art from Star Spangled Comics issues #31 to #49 (April 1944 to October 1945). As we will see the quality of the material varies greatly but this could just be due to how much time was spent on it. Certainly a few of the stories look quite rushed. Still the idiosyncratic nature of even the poorer examples makes the art rather fascinating.

Previously I used to credit this work to Gil Kane but as I discussed in the last chapter there is good evidence that is not true. Presently I am going with Joe Simon suggestion that this work was done by either Arturo or Louis Cazeneuve. But I do not have any independent evidence to back this up. I have seen other work that has been credited to these two brothers but it was done in a very different style. This does not necessarily refute Simon’s suggestion but it does not provide support either. So I am going to credit it questionably to either Arturo or Louis Cazeneuve. That however is a bit much to include in my discussions so there I will just refer to him as the replacement artist.

Almost all the stories that the replacement artist did had in the splash panel a cartouche with Simon and Kirby credits. However the art style seems so different from Simon and Kirby’s that it is hard to believe that any of their fans were fooled. Still the replacement artist did use a number of techniques that were popular with Simon and Kirby. Arching shadows, circular panels, figures extending past the panel border are all taken from the Simon and Kirby repertoire and adopted by the replacement artist.

I have to admit that I have not read most of the Newsboy Legion stories drawn by the replacement artist. Therefore I will not try to answer interesting question of whether Simon and Kirby left scripts or synopsis for stories that they did not get around to drawing. But I will say that these stories are full of action and fight scenes.

Star Spangled #36 (September 1944), pencils by Jack Kirby

The story art that Simon and Kirby had inventoried ran out before the cover art did. Therefore many of the replacement artist’s Newsboy Legion stories are in a comic sporting a Simon and Kirby cover.

The replacement artist picked up some of Simon and Kirby’s techniques but he also exhibited some interesting traits of his own. While Kirby was great at handling different points of view, I find the replacement artist had his own way of handling viewpoint. On page 9 he starts with a very low angle with the Guardian in the front but the actual focus on the characters in the background. He then switches the viewpoint to a close-up of one of the criminals with the Guardian seen over his shoulders. A close-up of just the criminal is next followed by a view almost entirely of the Guardian. Although panel 5 has an interesting low angle view the way it leads the eye towards the left makes it the weakest panel on the page. The page ends with another close-up of the Guardian as he proceeds to free himself of his bounds.

Star Spangled #45 (June 1945), art by Arturo or Louis Cazeneuve?

Observant readers may have noticed that I have deviated from my usual practice by not providing any examples of the splash page. This rather deliberate because as much as I admire this artist I do not find him very accomplished when it comes to splash panels. His best splashes are rather weak and his worst ones completely forgettable.

While the replacement artist did the cover for Star Spangled #32 (shown in the last chapter of this serial post), DC returned to using Simon and Kirby covers that they had inventoried before they left to fulfill their military service. Eventually the inventory was emptied and the replacement artists began to provide the covers as well. Consider how poor his splashes were, it comes as a surprise how effective the replacement artist covers were. Initially this lead me to consider that perhaps he was supplied with rough cover layouts to work from. However his layouts seem so novel that in the end I accept the designs as being done by the replacement artist himself.

Star Spangled Comics covers drawn by Jack Kirby returned with issue #48 (September 1945). I will discuss these Kirby covers in the next chapter. The story art continued to be supplied by the replacement artist. But not for long, Star Spangled #49 (October 1945) would contain the replacement artist’s last Newsboy Legion story.

While I have referred to this artist as the replacement artist, in fact he was not the only artist to work on the Newsboy Legion before Kirby returned. This will be covered in my next chapter.

While Simon and Kirby were working for DC they knew that at some time they both would be entering military service. To prepare for this the two went into hyper drive and started generating an inventory for DC to use while they were gone. This was very successful and Simon and Kirby covers and stories appeared long after Joe and Jack were working for Uncle Sam. But the inventory was not large enough to last until Simon and Kirby were back from helping to protect our country. By early 1944 (cover dates) there were no more Simon and Kirby story art left.

The question of Simon and Kirby’s replacement came back to my attention recently while reading DC’s Simon and Kirby Sandman archive. There were two stories in it that were listed as being done by Joe and Jack but to me looked like they were actually by some other artist (“Courage a la Carte”, Adventure #91, April 1944 and “Sweets for Swag”, Adventure #100, October 1945). The issue came up again when I recently obtained a copy of DC’s Simon and Kirby Newsboy Legion archive. For the Newsboy Legion volume, DC decided to include material that clearly was not drawn by Simon and Kirby. The replacement artist for most of the Newsboy Legion was credited in the DC volume as Gil Kane. It is an attribution that I have used previously as well. However when I talked with Joe Simon about this he insisted that Gil Kane was not the artist and suggested that it was the brothers Arturo and Luis Cazeneuve.

Simon and Kirby’s replacements was a subject that I have always meant to investigate a little further. This will be the start of another serial post. It will be a bit more erratic than most of my serial posts because I am not going to do this in a strictly chronological order. Instead I will begin with several chapters examining the Newsboy Legion, then look at Sandman and finally cover the Boy Commandos.

I will start with the Newsboy Legion because the work covered in this chapter can all be found in DC’s recent archive volume. Thus the reader will be able to view more examples than I can provide in this blog. The first story I will remark on is what I believe to be the last published complete Newsboy Legion story by Simon and Kirby before they went off into military service. Because of the push to create inventory and the use of other hands in the inking, the art by this time was not quite as good as early in the Newsboy Legion run. But even poorer quality Simon and Kirby art is still much better than what most other artists were doing. And while many artists might try to imitate Kirby’s dynamic art they were unable to keep it up page after page. In short I have no doubt that this story is in fact a Simon and Kirby production.

Gil: Mine was penciling. I would try to turn out a job every week or so. [They were] 12-page stories. I was copying-tracing-Jack’s work.

TJKC: What happened when Simon & Kirby went into the service? What happened to you?

Gil: I got a “Newsboy Legion” job to do by myself (like I had done the rest of them except they didn’t fix it up or do the splash), but when I walked through the door with the finished job, they said, “You’re fired.” They didn’t even look at the work. I really was lousy and I was out! At that point, I was about seventeen and I worked for Continental Comics for a guy named Temmerson. (I penciled and Carmine Infantino inked.) But that only lasted until I went into the Army.

There are a couple of really significant points in Gil’s short answers. Kane describes having previously done work that Simon and Kirby fixed up or provided the splash. Now it is possible that Gil Kane had something to do with earlier stories such as “Cabbages and Comics” but if so it was only in a minor capacity. Kane may have done things like help with the inking but I am sure that Kirby was the penciler.

There is no sign of Gil Kane, or any other artist other than Simon and Kirby, in the splash for “The Lady of Linden Lane” (Star Spangled #30, March 1944). It is a great splash with plenty of action and a little bit of humor with the normally fearless Guardian trying to duck from the blows of an elderly lady. The hoods in the background are a typical Simon and Kirby feature. This was inventoried material and so perhaps was executed in a hurry, but it still is great comic book art. Joe entered the Coast Guards before Jack went into military service so some of the inventory art may have been done by Kirby without Simon. However there is no reason to believe that DC published the inventoried art in the same order that Joe and Jack produced it. Nor are there any signs that I can find that distinguish this story from others there were done by both Simon and Kirby.

While the splash for “The Lady of Linden Lane” is work that can be attributed convincingly to Simon and Kirby, the rest of the story is not. The art is crude and stilted. There are parts that really do look like Kirby’s pencils but they appear to be swipes. For instance the cigar smoker in panel 5 of page 9 (shown above) is shown in the type of perspective that Kirby favored however it appears to be based on Guardian from the cover of Star Spangled #26 (November 1943).

An even more obvious swipe can be found in the figures of Snapper and Gabby shown above. Unlike my previous example this is a close swipe showing only minor alterations. Kirby did swipe on occasion but one thing I have never seen him do was swipe from himself. Jack did have some favorite poses that he often repeated but they are always done with such variation that it seems clear that he is not copying any previous drawing. Simon did swipe from Kirby, in fact rather often. But Joe was a good artist in his own right and his art is much better than this crudely drawn story. Further I can detect none of Simon’s drawing style in “The Lady of Linden Lane”. While I am not familiar enough with the work of Arturo or Luis Cazeneuve to confidently spot their work, what I have seen is much better than these crude drawings. The combination of a Kirby drawn splash with story done by another artist fits very well the interview reply that Kane gave. Add to that the use of swipes and Kane’s admitted poor artistry (he was 16 at the time). So assuming that there is at least some truth to his statements I am questionably attributing the story art for “The Lady of Linden Lane” to Gil Kane. The one problem with this attribution is that there is only one Newsboy Legion story that fits this description while Kane statement suggests he did multiple works in this fashion.

The next issue of Star Spangled Comics had a very different Newsboy Legion story. No clear sign of Simon and Kirby here, neither in the splash or the story art. Nor is this the same artist that produced the story art from “The Lady of Linden Lane” I must admit that I have slighted this artist in the past. His more “cartoony” approach gives the impression that he could be considered an “anti-Simon & Kirby”. But it would be a mistake to dismiss this artist. Put aside any comparisons to Joe and Jack and I am sure the reader will see this is a rather interesting and talented artist. Sure his faces and figures are exaggerated but they are full of life. He makes good use of varying the point of view. He seems to purposely distort background scenery giving it an almost cubist look. This artist may be rather bizarre but he is definitely not boring. I will cover this artist in more detail in the next chapter of this serial post.

But who is this artist? In the past I, and at least some others, have thought this was Gil Kane. Now I attributing “The Lady of Linden Lane” to Gil Kane but is there any other reason to reject Kane as the replacement artist for “Questions, Please” and other Newsboy Legion stories? Actually there is. Gil Kane went into the army shortly after his 18th birthday and he spent 19 months in service. Since he was born on April 6, 1926 that would mean he was in the army sometime about April or May 1944. However, as we will see in the next chapter, this replacement artist would provide work up to Star Spangled #49 (October 1945). This is well into the time that Kane was doing military service. Unlike Simon and Kirby, I doubt that DC would consider the replacement artist important enough to provide an inventory of works to use while he was gone. So it can be said with good confidence that Gil Kane was not the primary Simon and Kirby replacement artist.

But what about Joe Simon’s suggestion of the Cazeneuve brothers? I prefer to put off trying to answer that question until the next chapter where I will review more of the primary replacement artist’s Newsboy Legion work.